I think Foster's anxiety over the passing of the Old Guard is rather ironic; because in fact, their expertise in Latin notwithstanding, the Old Guard Latinists -- at least in Rome -- are invariably the ones most trenchantly opposed to the traditional Roman Rite. Go figure.

Here are some choice snippets from a recent talk Fr Foster gave at Notre Dame Law School:

Quote:Perhaps more pointedly than at other times, he spoke of the crisis in the Church - no, not the crisis in the Church about which this blog often comments - but about a crisis which Reggie thinks is here or will soon be here when men of his age and men like Grandpa Joe (which is how they refer to Benedict around the office, Reggie said) are gone and the last of those folks who took a knowledge of Latin for granted are no more. How will we study canon law, the Second Vatican Council, the Church Fathers, etc., if we no longer know Latin?...

If one studied letters from the time one was knee high to a grasshopper, by the time one was 18, Latin might be second nature. But one has to begin in elementary school, as men like Ronald Knox did, and even Reggie was hesitant, at least on Thursday, about beginning that early. Of course, he thinks that he could teach babies to speak Latin, but he wants to avoid at all cost a return to the bad old days in which Latin was jammed down childrens' throats....

Reggie related how they had been reading from Martin Luther's sermons in summer school and from some of Luther's letters to Erasmus; he confidently told the audience that Luther was no heretic and that if you but switched the names at the top of these sermons, putting Aquinas for Luther, no one would ever know the difference.

Ah... okayyyy...

Foster then went on to defend the ICEL translations -- saying that, for example, Et cum spiritu tuo simply means "And also with you."

The problem is Fr. Reginald could be 100% correct and at the same time 100% off base. Luther was not a life-long Arch-heretic, and when he first broke with Rome, could have preached a sermon or two that where perfectly orthodox. But for someone of Fr. R's status to make a blanket statement like that was either misquoted, or unwise, as it does not encompass or should not encompass all of Luther's writings. His attire deos leave one to question not only his desire to remain a Roman Catholic priest in the traditional sense, but also his taste in general.

Not to defend the indefensible, but Fr. Foster goes about in what looks like a bus driver's uniform (with the jacket zipped all the way up, all the time). He defends this by saying religious habits were based on the clothing worn by working people in medieval times.

I suspect that Fr. Foster is tolerated because, when push comes to shove, he does what he is told, he keeps his more outrageous comments to small, private venues, and he is one of the few living experts in his field. (I submit, Fr, Foster is probably one of the few living clerics who can make off the cuff remarks in Latin.)

In some ways Fr. Foster is a definite relic of his generation. (I gather he was in his prime during Vatican II.) I also get the idea he has seen more of the antics of Church bureaucracy than is probably good for him. (You know what they say about news and sausage...)

I remember once Fr. Foster passed a tabernacle on the way to vest for Mass, and instead of genuflecting, he just waved...